The gamblers love Allison Janney’s chances at the Oscars on Sunday. She’s sitting at a heavily favored, and bizarre, “3/19” odds in London. Back here in Hollywood, she already appears to have a winner’s halo.

The “I, Tonya” star and her shine headlined two simultaneous parties at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood on Thursday night (March 1).

Downstairs in the library and courtyard, Cadillac threw its third annual pre-Oscars bash. Upstairs, the Gersh agency celebrated its nominees, including Janney and “Three Billboards” star Sam Rockwell, in the Penthouse.

After a long campaign season, it’s surprising that front-runner nominees would want to go out at all before the big show, especially for Janney who is a veteran of thirteen Emmy campaigns.

Then again, she’s a varsity celebrant. Check out this photo after her Globes win in January.

“It’s been one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever been through in my life,” Janney said on the way in to the Cadillac party. “A lot of it has been preparing up to that moment, so that (Oscar Sunday) morning will be about being present.”

In the run up to Sunday’s show, The Party Report got a look at a Super Bowl-style commercial that Cadillac will air. It features iconic “future cars” from movies and TV, like the “Back to the Future” Delorean and the Jetson’s space ship. With that buzz and shuttling nominees around town all weekend, there was good cause to raise a glass.

While Joel McHale, Tiffany Haddish, and Aisha Tyler mixed with cocktails, crab cakes, and warm chocolate cookies on the unusually cold night, Janney darted upstairs to join her agency’s party in the penthouse.

On top of the Chateau, fellow front-runner Rockwell, “Shape of Water” star Richard Jenkins, and Leslie Bibb toasted the season. Brad Pitt and his manager Cynthia Pett-Dante quietly slipped in to the event, a surprise on multiple levels. First, he’s a CAA client. Further, he actually took a photo.

This photobomber should be banned from the Chateau for life. Manager Cynthia Pett-Dante and Brad Pitt at Gersh’s party in the Chateau penthouse, where Don Julio 1942 was the drink of choice. (Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Gersh)

In less cloistered news, chatter on the party circuit has picked up about a possible Jay-Z party in the parking garage of the Chateau Marmont on Sunday night. With Vanity Fair’s party switching stewards due to party founder and host Graydon Carter’s retirement, there is an opening on Oscar night for a new “toughest ticket in town.” This would be it.

The Party Report has not been able to confirm Jay-Z’s plans as of this writing, but the gate to the Chateau garage was oddly pulled shut on Thursday night. Some even production types reported that a four-day load in was underway. Converting a parking garage in the private and hushed hotel is indeed “Big Pimpin’.”

Meanwhile, leading women from all corners of the entertainment industry united for a Time’s Up benefit with Vanity Fair and Lancôme a mile west down Sunset at Soho House (above).

At the same time, J.J. Abrams hosted the annual Oscar Wilde Awards on the roof of his Bad Robot production company in Santa Monica. Two weeks before St. Patrick’s day, this event celebrating the US-Ireland relationship drew heavily on friends of the Irish, including Paramount Chairman Jim Gianopulos, Disney Films Chairman Alan Horn, Warner Bros.’ Peter Roth, Warner Bros. Chairman & CEO Kevin Tsujihara, producers Suzanne Todd, Patrick Crowley, and Gigi Pritzker, Showtime Programming President Gary Levine, and CAA boss President Richard Lovett also all joined the festivities.

Also on hand at the routinely casual affair was Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, whose “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” scenes were largely filmed on the Emerald Isle. Abrams joked that honoree Hamill “will always be best known for his role as Kent Murray on ‘General Hospital.'” In accepting, Hamill noted the connection between the “Star Wars” franchise and Ireland.

In addition to filming “Star Wars” in Ireland, he noted that “The Force Awakens” will mean billions for the Irish economy, “not to mention encouraging countless ‘Star Wars’ nerds to make it a go-to destination.”

As of Friday afternoon however, almost nothing is a go-to destination. It’s 54 degrees and pouring raining in Los Angeles, and the weather will likely thrash Friday night’s slate of Oscar gatherings, and anyone who didn’t book a tent weeks ago is finished. (Women In Film planned ahead for their tented bash at Crustacean and began loading in late Thursday night.)

The Brits are slated to gather in the Consul General’s backyard which should be a mud slog, but this is standard operating procedure for them.

The host sent a note to guests earlier: “As with any British event, we are fully prepared for any potential inclement weather!”

More to come…

Oscars 2018: Our Predictions in All 24 Categories (Photos)

We know who’ll win the acting awards, but several other categories — notably including Best Picture — are completely up in the air as Oscar night approaches. Here are our best guesses (and for a more complete explanation, read my fuller analysis):

If Best Picture is so split between "Shape of Water," "Dunkirk," "Lady Bird" and "Get Out," shouldn't this race be a nail-biter between del Toro, Nolan, Gerwig and Peele? Nope. Just as it has in every recent year, the heat has coalesced around a single director, in this case del Toro. This seems to be one of the nine categories that are pretty much a lock.

This is another of those locks. (In fact, all four acting categories are.) While Chalamet and Kaluuya are two of the year's big discovery, this award was Oldman's as soon as Focus began screening his all-but-unrecognizable performance as Winston Churchill. This is an Oscar standing ovation just waiting to happen.

It initially seemed to be one of the year's most competitive categories, with McDormand, Ronan and Hawkins landing massive acclaim, Robbie sneaking into the field with a bold performance and Meryl being Meryl. But then McDormand, an absolute force of nature in "Three Billboards," startin g winning all the awards. And she's not going to stop now.

Sam Rockwell, playing a dimwitted and thuggish racist who is one of the only people in "Three Billboards" to slightly change, won SAG and the Golden Globes and the Critics' Choice Award and BAFTA, which has made him a prohibitive favorite.

While voters occasionally decide that the best screenplay is the one with the most words, which would be good news for Aaron Sorkin and "Molly's Game," nothing seems positioned to challenge James Ivory's adaptation of the Andre Aciman novel.

This is likely a very close race between "Three Billboards" and "Get Out" -- and while Jordan Peele wrote the year's most zeitgeisty movie and could easily win, "Three Billboards" is a showier piece of writing.

"Blade Runner" DP Roger Deakins, a pretty unanimous choice as the greatest living cinematographer, has been nominated 13 previous times but has never won, and his astounding work on the Denis Villeneuve epic ought to finally do the trick.

"Baby Driver" is such a virtuoso piece of fast-paced editing that it could well prove an exception to the usual rule that you need to be a Best Picture nominee to win in this category. But "Dunkirk," which simultaneously cuts between three different war stories taking place at different locations and different times, is an advertisement for its editing.

It was a shock when the Costume Designers Guild gave its period-costumes award not to "Phantom Thread," the movie about a clothes designer, but to "The Shape of Water," most of whose characters sport lab coats or cleaning-lady smocks. But look for Oscar voters to recognize the movie in which the man makes the clothes and the clothes make the man ... and the women.

Predicted winner: "Phantom Thread"

"Phantom Thread" / Focus Features

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN Nominees: "Beauty and the Beast" "Blade Runner 2049" "Darkest Hour" "Dunkirk" "The Shape of Water"

This should be a showdown between the amazing futurescapes of "Blade Runner" and the richly detailed environments of "The Shape of Water" -- and the fact that voters like the latter movie better than the former one could tip the scales.

Here's another lock, because only one of these films features makeup that is instrumental in an Oscar-winning performance. Before Gary Oldman could act like Winston Churchill, he had to look like Winston Churchill, and that was the considerable accomplishment of the "Darkest Hour" makeup team.

Predicted winner: "Darkest Hour"

Focus Features

BEST ORIGINAL SCORENominees: "Dunkirk" "Phantom Thread" "The Shape of Water" "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

Voters love a piece of music that instantly captures the mood of a film they admire, and Alexandre Desplat provides that in his music for "The Shape of Water."

Predicted winner: "The Shape of Water"

Fox Searchlight

BEST ORIGINAL SONG Nominees: "Mighty River" from "Mudbound" "Mystery of Love" from "Call Me by Your Name" "Remember Me" from "Coco" "Stand Up for Something" from "Marshall" "This Is Me" from "The Greatest Showman"

"Remember Me" is from a bigger movie but "This Is Me" is becoming a phenomenon at just the right time, which will probably give "City of Stars" writers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul their second consecutive song Oscar.

Over the last 12 years, the same film has won in both Oscar sound categories eight times -- so when in doubt, it's best to predict a sound-category sweep. This year also lacks the kind of big musical nominee that often wins in the category, which will help "Dunkirk" in its quest to win another.

Predicted winner: "Dunkirk"

"Dunkirk" / Warner Bros.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Nominees: "Blade Runner 2049" "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" "Kong: Skull Island" "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" "War for the Planet of the Apes"

The team for the "Apes" franchise has yet to win an Oscar for their visual effects work on the series, but we're guessing that voters will finally come to their senses and realize what an accomplishment the simian saga has been.

With none of the four issue-oriented films really standing out, it's possible that the serious vote will split four ways and allow the beloved French icon Agnès Varda to become the oldest Oscar winner ever for her and co-director JR's wry and delightful travelogue "Faces Places."

Predicted winner: "Faces Places"

"Faces Places"

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT Nominees: "Edith+Eddie" "Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405" "Heroin(e)" "Knife Skills" "Traffic Stop"

The two strongest contenders are "Heroin(e)," a wrenching but also inspiring look at the opioid crisis in West Virginia though the eyes of three women (a fire chief, a judge and a crusading volunteer) on the front lines, and "Edith+Eddie," a character study of the country's oldest biracial newlyweds that leaves viewers utterly infuriated at government indifference toward the elderly. Typically, the film that wins in this category is the film that leaves viewers with some hope, which could give "Heroin(e)" a tiny edge.

At the Oscar nominees luncheon, there was no bigger star in the room than Kobe Bryant, and nobody who posed for more selfies. And animator/director Glen Keane is a Disney vet almost as beloved in animation as Kobe is in basketball.

Predicted winner: "Dear Basketball"

"Dear Basketball"

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM Nominees: "DeKalb Elementary" "The Eleven O'Clock" "My Nephew Emmett" "The Silent Child" "Watu Wote/All of Us"

Three of the nominees -- "DeKalb Elementary," "My Nephew Emmett" and "Watu Wote" -- are exceptional, fact-based student films that could not be timelier: "DeKalb" deals with a shooter at an elementary school, "Emmett" with a horrifying episode that helped trigger the civil rights movement, "Watu Wote" with Christian/Muslim tensions.

Predicted winner: "DeKalb Elementary"

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The acting categories are all sewn up, but Best Picture could yield an upset

We know who’ll win the acting awards, but several other categories — notably including Best Picture — are completely up in the air as Oscar night approaches. Here are our best guesses (and for a more complete explanation, read my fuller analysis):